To-Do List: Greece Asks for More Time; Akin to Skip Tampa

To know: New polls show President Obama with a four point lead over Mitt Romney, down from a six point lead in July… The names of six hundred alleged phone-hacking victims will be released in the coming weeks, increasing pressure on Rupert Murdoch’s News International … Ahead of bailout talks, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras says that Greece needs more time to enact spending cuts … Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin refused to withdraw from the race, though he will honor wishes from party leaders that he not attend the national convention in Tampa. (Hendrik Hertzberg and Amy Davidson have more on Akin.) … Russia, citing an unidentified foreign ministry official, claims that Syria has no intention of using chemical weapons.

“You have to admit this is pretty badass,” the one man was saying. He had a carbine shorty perched on his hip, Stallone-style.

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “To me, it looks mean.”

“It’s supposed to look mean.”

“They should make it in pink,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be cute?”

“You’re shitting me.”

“They should make it in Hello Kitty!” she said. “I would totally buy it if it was Hello Kitty.”

“Sweet holy crap,” the other man said. “That would be the worst possible death. Can you imagine? Shot dead by a Hello Kitty semiauto.”

It was difficult to tell if Ron was listening in on any of this; both of us had our lips pulled back in pretend smiles. “Now, what can I show you?” he asked me while the one guy went on faking his bad death and the woman continued her torture with something about rainbow-colored bullets.

I didn’t really want to buy an assault rifle, or even a handgun, but I was curious to know what buying one felt like, how the purchase worked, what-all was involved. Nobody in my circle back east had guns, nobody wanted them, and if anybody talked about them, it was in cartoon terms: Guns are bad things owned by bad people who want to do bad things. About the only time the people where I come from thought about guns was when something terrible happened. A lunatic sprays into a crowd and we have the same conversation we always have: those damn guns and those damn people who insist on having them.

To watch: Comedian Phyllis Diller, who died this week, on the life of a standup comic.

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As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.